


A Treasury of Things Invented

by CaelumLapis



Category: Smallville
Genre: M/M, Spoilers: General for Season One’s Leech and Drone and Tempest., Spoilers: General for Season Two’s Vortex.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-23
Updated: 2020-06-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:54:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24881131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaelumLapis/pseuds/CaelumLapis
Summary: Clark doesn’t often have the time to remember. Today is different.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	A Treasury of Things Invented

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer is, I don’t own them, not even a little.

Clark doesn’t often have the time to remember. 

Today is different, the sun climbing slowly outside of his window. He cradles a cup of coffee against his palm, and its heat is more of a pleasant idea in the back of his throat than an actual sensation. Coffee still reminds him of the Talon. 

His apartment is quiet, squares of pale golden sun overlaying worn furniture and stacks of magazines. There are boxes in the hall closet that he needs to unpack. No particular reason, they are just starting to bother him. 

Things left unfinished. 

The closet door creaks when he opens it, dust motes colored by sunlight drifting lazily around him like almost invisible snowfall. Boxes are wedged into the overhead shelf, their corners reinforced with wide stripes of packing tape. He wonders when they began looking so fragile.

_“Mom, I can carry it.” He worries that she does too much. It never used to worry him, but now it does. He knows that she is stronger than she looks, but he doesn’t want to test it._

_“I’m fine, Clark. Just hold the door.” Mom’s smile has a gentle scolding tucked into its determined lines, her hands curled around the corners of a box. She carries it into the apartment, her steps soft against the wooden floor. He follows, nudging the door closed with his foot._

_Boxes are piled everywhere, his life in containers. It is smaller than he thought it would be and still so big, strange and wonderful at the same time. Mom glances over her shoulder at him and smiles. “Where do you want this?”_

_“Hall closet,” he answers, because it has the only empty place left. It is time to fill it. He heads for the closet and opens it, waiting for her to catch up to him. She is only a moment behind. She hands over the box and he sets it on the shelf._

_“That’s the last one,” He says it quietly, looking around the small apartment. Home. His home._

_She wraps an arm around his waist, comforting and quiet. Her eyes are crinkled at the corners when she smiles at him, and the dim afternoon light reflects in her hair, strands of red and white and gray._

He lowers a box to the floor and relaxes beside it, ripping the tape away from the cardboard. His yearbook rests just beneath the flap, its worn leather surface embellished with a crow. He brushes a palm over it, remembering Lana’s pretty smile and Chloe’s sparkling eyes. He opens the yearbook, thinking of Pete beside him on the bleachers with his hands cupped around his mouth. 

_“Yeah!” Pete pumps his fist in the air, his face a wide grin with shining eyes. It is contagious. Clark grins with him until it loosens something in his chest, something that always worries about too fast and too strong, too visible and too different._

_It doesn’t matter with Pete. Tonight he is just a boy, and his school is winning. Lana’s pom-poms rustle in the night air, her voice carrying on the wind. She cheers the Crows to victory alongside the pleasant scent of hot dogs and the buttery aroma of stale popcorn._

Clark sets the yearbook down and rummages deeper, nudging aside a few farmers’ almanacs and a faded photograph of Lana, smiling beside a horse. There is a red ribbon from the 4-H State Fair, now muted with age. He remembers finding forty-five rocks and losing all of what made him strange, at least for a few days. 

It is his favorite award from high school.

Beneath the ribbon is a creased print-out for class president with his slogan. _Clark Kent, the man of tomorrow._ The sheet is weighed at the corner with a merit badge in the shape of a bee, a joke from Chloe. He should call her. He remembers her laughter as he sets the sheet of paper beside the box. She still laughs like leaves tumbling down in autumn, a flurry of color and sound. 

There is a copy of the Torch with his first front page article. He can remember tapping a pencil against the desk as he typed, carefully considering each word. He is still proud of the article; even though some sentences make him wonder what he was thinking when he wrote them. 

_“Clark, time’s up.” Chloe is impatient, her hair sticking out wildly as she struggles with the printer, toner smeared across her cheek and coating her fingers. The printer makes a brief humming noise, its red sullen warning light finally fading._

_“Got it!” Chloe’s voice is triumphant and Clark mentally adjusts the scorecard._

_Chloe – eight. Printer – three._

_“Give me a second,” Clark stalls, tapping the pencil steadily as he edits another sentence. Tap-tap-tap. It is calming._

_“Come on, Clark,” The grin on her face defies her annoyed tone. “Print it. The news waits for no farmboy.”_

_The sound of the printer fills the room, steady and relentless._

An old issue of Fortune magazine is beneath the newspaper, its cover marred with twin punctures, burnt around the edges. Clark pauses for a long moment before he lifts the magazine out of the box and studies it. He can still remember the assignment, an essay on corporate social responsibility. It was the first time he’d asked Lex for help with homework. Anything corporate was Lex’s area of expertise, not his. 

He’d almost waited too long to ask. His friendship with Lex was still so new and strange then. Lex was bundled energy and meetings, reports and unexpected smiles, a Luthor to so much of Smallville and a friend to him. 

It was unexpected to have the gates open for him, for the security guards to know his name. Strange to know the passcode that opened the kitchen door. It was a world so different from his, heavy books and suits of armor, wide rooms and glittering crystal. 

_“I need your help with something.”_

_Lex leans his pool cue against the wall and circles the table, moving closer. “Miss Lang?”_

_Clark feels his face warming. “No. Homework. I– there’s a paper. I need your advice.”_

_“Topic?” Lex’s expression is intensely thoughtful, as if he is gathering an army of knowledge to battle Clark’s homework. It is weirdly endearing._

The paper itself is still inside its plastic guard, red pencil scrawled on its white surface. Clark opens the magazine with a whisper of sound, the pages resisting at the tears, tiny bits of burnt paper fluttering down to the floor. 

Some memories are bittersweet. 

_“Do I really need all of this?” Clark has at least six books and just as many magazines in his arms. Lex is stalking along the bookshelves as if his mere presence guarantees that they will surrender all relevant information._

_Lex makes a strange noise in response, soft and insistent, and Clark wonders what the translation is. There is no guidebook for Lex. Sometimes he wishes there was one, but it would probably be like the instruction manual to a VCR. Thorough and thoroughly baffling._

_Clark sets the stack down on Lex’s desk and picks up a magazine, examining the cover. Fortune. The paper is heavy and glossy. It is a surprise to see Lex standing in the middle of the group of suited men and women on the cover. The future of corporate America._

_“This is about you?”_

_“In part. LuthorCorp was one of the companies profiled. Dad felt I should make an appearance.”_

_“Oh.” Maybe this assignment won’t be so bad._

_Clark takes the books and magazines with him, promising to return them within a week. He arranges them carefully on his desk and slumps on the couch to read the Fortune article._

_It isn’t as easy to read as he’d thought it would be, and reading it faster doesn’t help. Lex is confusing, but what Lex does at LuthorCorp is even more confusing. Clark has the dictionary handy for literary emergencies, but even understanding the words doesn’t help._

_The article is dense, full of itself and boring. It doesn’t fit Lex, who is exciting and interesting. Clark sighs, staring at the magazine. The words blur slowly and refocus. He’s wondered what Lex does all day, but it never seems like the right time to ask. He still has no idea._

_Clark stretches, propping his feet on the arm of the couch and sprawling on his back. The couch is solid under him, soft and reassuring._

_He tries again, flipping past the section on multinational concerns and human capital. A woman smiles at him from the page, Mona Lisa and mysterious. The caption states that she does something with biotechnology, and feels that her greatest strength is the confidence of her employees._

_He turns the page._

_There are moments in life when things just connect, when they click. Moments when seeing something causes everything around it to make sense. Seeing his spaceship clicked. Seeing Lana clicked._

_This clicks._

_Lex is on the page, a photograph of him with a few people in crisp suits and rougher men in hardhats. Lex isn’t wearing one. He is holding it in his hand, about to set it down. Clark bites back the strange urge to lecture Lex about safety as he studies the picture._

_Lex’s sleeves are rolled to his elbows, his free hand pointing toward the blueprints on the table in front of him. The look on his face is what clicks, what makes sense. He is almost, but not really smiling at one of the men standing beside him. His expression suggests that he is about to say something smart and probably vaguely insulting._

_LuthorCorp rebuilds. Social responsibility. Jobs saved after tornadoes. Phrases reach up to him from the page, but he doesn’t need them to understand this. This is what Lex does. This is what corporate social responsibility is. It was just a fancy way of saying that companies help people. That Lex helps people._

_Clark wonders what Lex is about to say to the man beside him in the picture and wonders where the guy lives. Does he have a family? Did Lex save his job, and what does the man do for him?_

_He understands now what Chloe meant when she said that a picture tells a story. This one does. This is the Lex that he knows. He’s seen that expression before, seen Lex with his sleeves rolled up, almost but not really smiling. Thinking and planning, helping Clark with Lana, with his homework, with the parts of his life that he allows Lex to see._

_It is a rush of excitement, and he is smiling before he realizes it, before he feels his mouth move. The essay is starting to take shape in his thoughts, words and sentences. What this is, what it means, why it is important._

Clark finds the page with the photograph and examines it again, touches the torn paper and the black and gray of its burnt edges. It had been a strange night for realizing things. Lex’s face is missing from the picture, but he can still remember how it looked.

_His thoughts move rapidly, bunched together and scrambling for his attention. He is connected to Lex through a car and a riverbank, but the idea that Lex wants to help people is a link that Clark can understand. It makes Lex in his huge house and his strange world somehow understandable, less confusing._

_He shifts on the couch, reaching down distractedly to rub a hand over the front of his jeans. He studies the picture, his hand remaining there, fingers flexing uneasily. It feels good. Better than it should._

_Clark glances away from the magazine. The loft is quiet, darkened corners with the scent of fresh hay. He takes a deep breath, eyeing the magazine again. There is a woman in the picture, standing slightly to the left behind Lex. She is pretty, her expression neutral, maybe a little bored. She is wearing a hardhat. He wouldn’t have to lecture her about safety._

_He wonders what her name is, and decides that she looks like a Maggie. He doesn’t know anybody named Maggie. She looks like she would have a kind smile, gentle and sweet where it curls up at the edges. His hand is warm, and she has long brown hair like Lana. He holds the magazine carefully, high above his chest. He has to give it back._

_He stares at her, imagines her smiling at him and saying his name. His hand rubs faster, hotter and tighter. He rolls his hips up into it, biting back a grunt. She is so pretty, and Lex is so interesting._

_Clark’s hand slows, his breath rushed and frustrated. He is looking at Maggie. Not Lex. He squints at the page, and yes, she looks like Lana. Tiny, with long dark hair. His hand moves again, his shoulders tensing. Maggie, who would say his name with a smile like Lana does. Maggie, who looks so normal with her shiny hair and pretty clothes, who would let him be normal with her._

_The loft feels smaller, the air hotter and confining, warming around him like a blanket. He can see Maggie doing more than just smiling, her voice silky and smooth like her hair, like Lex’s voice. Deeper, wrapping around him and making his stomach flip and his face heat._

_Lex, who lives with the eyes of Smallville on him and relishes it, who pulls attention toward him like a magnet. Clark lives in Lex’s orbit and feels the pull of it even when Lex isn’t around. There is something about Lex that digs under Clark’s skin, quicksilver between thoughts of Lana and Maggie. Lex in the picture does the same, and Clark’s eyes slide away from Maggie and the maybe of her gentle smile._

_There is a part of Clark that will always love normal, will see Lana’s soft and ordinary smile and want to be a part of it. There is also something just under the soft and ordinary, the part that pulls toward Lex, that pushes up and takes over with the stroke of Clark’s hand. That breathes up with the heated air of the loft and curls around Clark’s mouth as it forms the sound of Lex’s name. The part of Clark that will protect people like Maggie, but never be one of them. The part that knows Lex will never be one of them either. The part that flares red behind his eyes as he comes, wet and hot over his fist._

_The part that Clark can’t trust._

_He gasps for air, writhing and trying to fight it back but this is as much a part of him as what he feels for Lana’s smile, twin points of fire searing through Lex’s face. The loft is too small, crushing and warm around him. The sharp odor of burnt paper lingers, long after Clark smothers the magazine underneath him and holds it there._

The magazine curls into itself in his grasp, fragile and crinkling in his fists. Clark breathes in and loosens his grip. He glances down in the box at the paper he’d written, at the red pencil marks curving around and over precise black typeset. The note praising it as the best assignment he’d written. He can remember his teacher asking him about his plans for the future, at her smile when he’d hesitantly mentioned his growing interest in journalism.

He tells other people’s secrets, and keeps his own. 

Clark places the magazine carefully back in the box, gathering up the yearbook and the printout. He has some packing tape in his desk. The photograph of Lana smiles up at him as he straightens the contents of the box. He covers her gently with the yearbook. The sound of the tape is loud, scattering tiny flecks of light that reflect in dust motes, rising and settling around him. He returns the box to the closet shelf, propping it carefully with the other memories that he safeguards.

He will unpack them another day.


End file.
